Memory

Second grade seemed to last an eternity, from its beginning in September to the end of the year in hot June. To my eight-year-old life it was like an eternity or at least a lifetime--and the summer vacation following on was like another lifetime added on. More recently I registered my son for second grade and I assure you an eternity did not pass, nor a lifetime or even any time at all until I was asked to sign him up for third grade and did I know what he was doing this summer. Everybody experiences this difference in time perception, across genders and across cultures, young time going slow and old time going fast and no one has one explanation that is generally accepted.

I decided to diagram my memory in a scalometer, and I think the diagram helps explain the situation. From eight-years-old to nine-years-old is one stop on the scalometer dial, from "1" to "2". At the same time, I went from 37 to 38, barely one quarter stop from "14" to "15". The message is clear to me: time is experienced like the accumulating rings of a tree, in proportion to the amount of time you have already experienced and accumulated in your body, in its memory, habits and conventions. Recently I found out Glashow agrees with this explanation, though leading psychologists do not.



To complete the diagram, I put John Tyler Bonner's rendering of the changing proportions of the human body, from infant to mature adult.

Cells

You are composed of organs, organelles, tissue, cells, bacteria, chromosomes, proteins, and viruses, a virtually uncountable number of tiny living processes that toil mightily to enable you to be you. Look in a microscope, though, and you will see a fuzzy, blurry out-of-focus colorless emptiness. That is because our eyes are not capable of tuning in such tiny activity.

Lucky for us, the team at XVIVO and Biovisions are hard at work making animations based on hard data, to let us imagine these activities as if we could see them. See the "Inner Life of the Cell" animation by Alain Viel, Robert A. Lue and John Liebler, and the dengue fever animation by Irene Bosch and Yorgo Modis.

Your natural nanomachines at work in your cells:



Of course, these videos are a kind of fiction. Things look like they are moving quickly at a human scale, when in fact they move exceedingly slowly at scales where everything is different. See for example the discussion Reynold's number and allometry on the wiki.

For more, see the wiki article on XVIVO animations.

Human Being

Walt Whitman wrote, "I contain multitudes", and any scale survey reveals that this is literally true. See for example how Eames zooms into a man's hand and discovers layer upon layer of activity. Many people only focus outward, learn about the vastness of the universe and feel small. Don't do that. Don't only look up at big buildings, our huge planet and the distant stars and feel small. Look inside yourself: you are commander of a vast empire of micro- and nano-machines toiling endlessly to let you be a yourself.

When I diagram it on a scalometer it comes out about equal. You might be one in a billion (actually, one in seven billion), but you are also master of your major organs, bones and tissues: check it out on Google body. But the truly large numbers begin when you consider that you are composed of thousands of billions of cells, busy as beavers. Either way you look, macro- or micro-, there are worlds within worlds.


The human scale is not small at all.

Energy

Energy includes my mood and motivation in the morning, the amount of gasoline in my car's fuel tank, and whether or not I want new nuclear power generators in my neighborhood. It determines whether someone's gesture ends up being a caress on my cheek or a punch to my jaw, whether their utterance is a soft purr of contentment or a shout of exuberant joy. Hard to get on one chart.

I went with the more scientific energy events for now, but I did put on the diagram the energy range that we need to feel, hear and see. A good start.



It's a complex subject--for example, what is the difference between energy and power? Join the conversation here.

Data

I rendered a scale of information in terms of "bits." It was easy to find the number of bits that fit on a hard disk, or the bytes in the Library of Congress. But what about the information we get from a sideways glance, or a fleeting glimpse of pain on our beloved's face? I would like to find a way to include those types of information as well.



Some say data amounts and speed is increasing so fast (due to Moore's law and other factors) that we are heading for a singularity. To discuss it, please head over to the scalometer wiki.

Heart

The heart was created by accident. I set out to render the powers of ten exactly, in a circle. The result is one of my most popular images.

I submitted a two minute film about this to the Core77 Powers of Ten contest, and got some good feedback. For more discussion, see the scalometer wiki.

For more information, see the wiki.

Universcale

Nikon commissioned from the Japanese design boutique BA a gorgeous superscale survey application called "Universcale." The flash applet displays about one hundred objects in ways that allow the viewer to compare their size (in meters). Here is an assortment of the illustrations by Y. Yoriko.

The user is greeted with cartoon outlines on a length scale, so that objects can be compared without too many details. A click then exposes a color illustration by Yoriko Yoshida, with text describing the item. Lastly, the detailed illustration may be flanked by a representative object smaller and larger, the two comparative objects shown in outline view. The three views facilitate discovery and comprehension of the different scales of length.

Below, some examples (all are linked to their website). The apple in silhouette, standing in a row where you can see (from left to right) a honey bee, a one cent coin, a cockroach, a 35mm roll of film, a golf ball, a katydid, a mouse, the Apple, a CD, and a soccer ball. When the apple is clicked, a full color illustration with text appears, flanked by "small" on the left--linked to the snow flake--and "big" on the right--linked to the turtle. For a complete list of the objects and further discussion, see the scalometer wiki.